


Hearts on Fire

by idinathoreau



Category: Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist (TV)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Bisexual Female Characters, Drunk Sex, F/F, F/M, Implied/Referenced Cheating, Some Humor maybe, but instead keep drunkenly hooking up, but it's against Max so I dont care, don't expect it to be flawless, in which these idiots wont admit they're in love, there is no character study here, this is a grief fic over lauren leaving the show
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-16 10:49:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28705446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idinathoreau/pseuds/idinathoreau
Summary: Zoey visits Joan in Singapore for the annual joint directors meeting. A few bottles of wine later, it sets them down a long twisted path of drunken hookups, questionable decisions, and plenty of denial.Something I wrote to make Joan's departure hurt a little less.
Relationships: Zoey Clarke/Joan, Zoey Clarke/Max Richman (mentioned)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 32





	Hearts on Fire

**Author's Note:**

> Did I write this instead of working on Stay With Me? Yes. Yes I did.
> 
> Cause that farewell scene wrecked me and then ofstormsandwolves had to go and write a fix-it fic. So of course I needed to write my own angst and pining fic for these two useless bisexuals.
> 
> Also, if you need a soundtrack for this fic, give "Hearts on Fire" by Gavin James a try!

Zoey stirred, her head pounding.

_Ughhh, what…what happened?_

Her mouth was tacky, her sinuses flaring in indignation of the sharp morning air. Her whole body felt heavy. 

She was facing an unfamiliar off-white wall, tastefully decorated with black flowers and vines. A framed photograph of a lone bumboat hung there, the tiny vessel alone on an impossibly blue sea as a gray storm swept in overhead. The outside traffic noises of an unfamiliar city coming to life pecked at her skull.

Zoey blinked several times and tried to move. Someone made a noise of protest and the heaviness increased.

_Joan_ …?

Zoey froze as she realized the situation they were currently in. 

Joan was naked. They were naked. And in bed. Together.

Her brain spat out jumbled images from the previous night: _laughing, a gentle finger on her neck, brushing dark locks away from Joan’s face, getting caught in her brilliant blue eyes, Joan straddling her on the plush downstairs couch, making her scream in ecstasy, taking Joan’s moist fingers and leading the woman upstairs, her face between Joan’s thighs, Joan crying out her name…_

Zoey sat up, so quickly that she dislodged Joan and jostled her awake.

“Z…zoey?” Joan rubbed her eyes. “Why are we…?” She glanced around. “Oh….”

Zoey stared out the window at the Singapore skyline and the wrong side of the Pacific Ocean. 

“What the fu-?”

* * *

_20 hours earlier_

Joan paced nervously at the airport, glaring at anyone who so much as looked at her. 

Today was the day. Today Zoey was visiting Singapore. 

Danny Michael Davis (still very much under house arrest and very much the more neurotic for it) had declared that the annual joint director’s meeting was to be held in Singapore this year. Partially to celebrate Joan’s overwhelming success in turning around the Asian division but mostly because since his lock-in, Danny apparently ‘worked better on Singapore time now.’ Whatever that meant. 

So everyone was flying out here: all the division heads, all the floor directors…including one spritely little redhead.

Not that she was worried about seeing her again. 

It had just been so long without any kind of contact between them.

Joan’s feet stopped dead when she saw her, ambling out of baggage claim like she was half-lost, half-awed at the new destination. Her heart went back to so long ago, when she’d sat on Zoey’s bed and told her she was leaving.

Zoey positively radiated as she finally caught sight of her. She was like Joan’s personal little orange sun; tugging her effortlessly into orbit.

“Ahoy there.” And yeah, Joan may have melted a little inside at that. Because while Zoey may be actually acting the part of a successful career woman (wearing designer clothes now and pulling a suitcase along behind her and just a little buzzed from the first class champagne) she was still just _Zoey_. The only person bold and quirky enough to sometimes inexplicably greet Joan like the cutest of pirates.

“Hi.” Joan managed, her voice tight. 

“You didn’t have to meet me here you know.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Silence stretched between them; a silence lasting months while Joan had moved half a world away and Zoey had thrown herself into Joan’s old job.

Without thinking, Joan took Zoey’s luggage and walked off. Zoey, falling immediately into old habits, bounded after her, taking an extra half step for each of Joan’s. It was familiar, forever unchanged. Even if Zoey’s heels subtracted the smallest amount of the height difference between them. 

But when Joan told her waiting private driver to take them home, Zoey gave her a questioning look. “I…I assumed you wouldn’t want to stay in some hotel…” Joan explained, heart skipping nervously, her mouth running away. “not when…I have three empty guest bedrooms I never use…the dogs have taken over one but the others are perfectly reasonable. Certainly better than the ridiculous tourist trap of a hotel that my idiot assistant booked…”

Zoey smiled, lighting up the entire car. “No. No not at all. Joan, it’s perfect.”

Joan huffed, a smile finally playing on her face. “Hi.” She said again, because she could. Because Zoey was _here_.

The coder smiled at her, taking her hand. “Hi. It’s so good to finally see you again.”

And just like that, her nerves melted away.

* * *

Several hours later, they were laughing away like old friends, Zoey regaling her with _Tales of the 4th Floor_. Joan was actually relaxing, actually enjoying a night at home. Zoey’s presence had illuminated her entire house.

Neither one had noticed the second wine bottle getting very, very low. But Joan noticed something more alarming when Zoey shed her jacket. Her eyes were drawn to the angry red mark on her collarbone and the wineglass in her grip creaked.

She knew it was from Max. She knew he had staked his claim on Zoey over a year ago and then held on like a religious fanatic. 

But with the alcohol buzzing in her veins and the familiar face within her reach at last, it only seemed natural to stretch out and gently trace the blemish. Like she could brush it away. 

Zoey leaned into the touch, slurred something about Max wanting her to be more serious, to be _his_ completely, to not go on this trip but stay and help him fix his failing business venture. But she’d barely finished the sentence when she fell forward into Joan.

Joan’s lips rubbed the blemish away.

* * *

They kept their hands and eyes to themselves all through the rest of Zoey’s stay. Zoey stayed in her own room. 

They threw themselves into the work and spent the evenings doing mundane things like walking the streets, visiting tourist traps Joan had never made time for, and listening to Zoey animatedly explain the plot of the new season of _Galaxy Falling_ which had yet to be released in Joan’s new home. 

Joan locked the liquor cabinet and hid the key in the dry dog food. She kept Zoey occupied without drinking. And without touching.

It wasn’t exactly awkward. But they still didn’t talk about it. Zoey kept watching her anxiously, like Joan’s silences were telling her more than her expression. Joan instead focused on getting Zoey to talk about how she was doing, how her family was moving on now that Mitch’s death wasn’t immediately in their memories.

At the airport some days later, they parted amicably but still avoided any contact with each other. No matter how much Joan wanted to.

“See…see you next year?” Joan hated how her voice trembled at the question.

But Zoey had nodded, still smiling just as brightly and for the moment, everything was okay.

They’d just had a drunk moment, Joan reasoned on her cold, lonely trip home alone. It didn’t mean anything.

It wasn’t going to happen again.

* * *

It happened again.

Zoey hadn’t meant for it to. But then she’d landed in Singapore the next year and there Joan had been: stiff but welcoming and smelling far too good for Zoey to pretend like she hadn’t thought about her all the time. She’d missed her, even with their increased texting and occasional phone calls. She’d hugged her at the airport before realizing that maybe that wasn’t such a good idea. Joan hadn’t seemed to mind.

Max had rather angrily broken up with her a month prior, citing her ‘lack of commitment’ as the reason. This tidbit somehow slipped out into conversation her first night. Joan’s hungry eyes had drank her in, equal parts concern and desire. She’d sung to Zoey about wanting her.

Zoey had done her best not to react.

At first, they’d both been careful around the alcohol, eying each other bashfully at each refill at each meeting and party, avoiding eye contact or finger brushes. For two days, Zoey had kept up her guard.

But then the 5th floor manager of the Singapore office (who inexplicably adored Zoey) had challenged them to a partner’s drinking game with his best coder. 

And by the end, Zoey was too drunk and too wired to keep her hands to herself.

She slid her fingers under Joan’s shirt and traced her hip as the older woman helped her to their car. She gazed up at the taller woman, a soft plea in her eyes that she was too drunk to hide anymore.

And Joan’s lips fell to her skin like a released magnet. 

Zoey awoke the next morning in Joan’s bed in a disappointing repeat of the previous year. Even the photo on the wall was the same. 

They didn’t say anything as they dressed and Joan took Zoey to the airport. Joan didn’t even sing.

But just before they parted ways, Zoey stood on tiptoes, her heart in her throat and gently kissed Joan goodbye. On the cheek of course.

* * *

The third year, a newly-freed Danny moved the meeting to San Francisco. 

Somehow, Joan thought that that would keep them from…well, from falling back into what was becoming a bad habit. That and the fact that Zoey and Max had had yet another exhausting cycle of breaking up and inexplicably getting back together.

It didn’t.

Four hours after her flight landed, she had her lips against Zoey’s neck, far too much tequila buzzing through her veins and giving her amazing ideas.

_“We should do it…”_

_“No…”_

_“Why not?”_

_“Max…”_

_“Fuck Max…he made you cry.”_

_“Yeah…you’re right. Why not?”_

And that was how they ended up at _The Good Choice_ : a 24-Hour Chapel in the touristy part of San Francisco, Joan in a hastily-rented tuxedo, Zoey clasping a lacy veil to her red locks, both of them giggling far too much. 

Their only witness was a random Freddy Mercury-esque guy who Joan had handed a few hundreds to to throw some rice at them and sign a paper. Joan slipped the cheap, tarnished gold band around Zoey’s finger and kissed her until the smaller woman leapt up to straddle her hips.

Their wedding bed was Zoey’s queen, covered in constellations that Joan traced in a drunk daze as she watched her new wife sleep after their consummations exhausted them both. 

The next morning, they both noticed the rings and let out identical groans.

“No more drinking around each other…” Zoey lamented, head in her hands. 

Joan winced, wishing it was that simple. “Agreed.”

* * *

Neither of them could keep that promise.

Joan had meant to get the marriage nullified. She really had. But before she could book the appointment with her on-maternity-leave lawyer, she was heading back to Singapore for an emergency press scandal regarding one of their apps. It was just bad luck really. She’d do it eventually.

Zoey had never called to ask if she did. So she didn’t.

The ring Joan wore on the wrong hand, where she could remind herself of the horrible consequences of her sad addiction to Zoey. It stayed there until the 5-year company management reunion in London the following August. 

She hadn’t realized Zoey was coming; thinking that the coder’s imminent engagement to the man-child in love with her would keep the redhead too occupied to attend. 

So she was already several drinks deep when Zoey ambled into the hotel bar. Immediately, Joan’s eyes shot to her fingers. A tacky silver engagement ring sat there; far from the one she’d slipped on Zoey’s finger the previous year. 

That ring, Zoey wore on a chain around her neck.

Joan learned this when she looped it around her fingers as she bit dark marks into the woman’s neck at midnight. The sex wasn’t a decision; it was reflex at this point. Neither of them could have stopped it if they tried. Joan certainly didn’t want to.

They lay together in the tiny inn bed afterward, alcohol on their lips but heads clear, and Joan couldn’t stop herself from tracing Zoey’s naked form.

“Do you love him?” The alcohol loosed the words, far more nasty than she intended, into the air around them.

She never got an answer. Zoey used her lips for other things that eventually made Joan forget the question.

* * *

Zoey’s heart wasn’t in it. But she hated to admit that. 

Max loved her, she knew he did. It was just some cruel, ugly trick of the universe that she didn’t love him back equally. He was still her best friend. But for years now, she’d increasingly felt like she’d traded her sympathetic best friend for a boyfriend who demanded far too much from her. He wanted her to want everything he did. And when she didn’t, he couldn’t seem to accept it.

The tighter he held, the more she drifted back to Joan. Whenever he was inside her or even just making conversation with her, she wished he was Joan and hated herself for thinking that way.

But she couldn’t ignore that her four drunk nights with Joan held more space in her memory than the 5 years of her and Max’s relationship. 

They weren’t happy. They argued a lot, Max always made empty threats to leave when they both knew he would always come back. Zoey cried about not being happy and about not being able to fully explain why. To him or to herself. She couldn’t give all of herself to Max no matter what they tried.

Max’s solution had been marriage. In his mind, they just needed a promise to each other. As if saying the words would finally paste together what had been broken from the start. At first it had seemed like a solid plan. But then she’d seen Joan in London and everything had crumbled at the slightest touch.

Zoey finally told him two months before their planned wedding: she was still married to Joan.

Predictably, that had been the final straw. 

Max gave up, they made their excuses to friends and family, and he finally moved all his things out of her house. Even his movie collection.

Zoey wished she could have cared more. But it had been over between them the second she’d first seen Joan at the Singapore airport. On some level, he’d probably known it too. He’d just been in deeper denial about it, letting his devotion to her convince him that the universe would right itself the way he wanted it to. 

Zoey knew she deserved the reaction she got and the crushing despair of knowing she had in-part ruined not only their relationship but their friendship too. She wallowed for days, hating herself, trying to think of any way she could redeem herself to Max.

Answers were not easy.

But…she reasoned, biting her lip. Phone in one hand, tarnished golden ring in the other. Maybe she didn’t just need to ask Max for forgiveness.

It was 10am in Singapore when she called. But it was answered on the first ring.

“ _Vanakkam_?”

“Oh…uh…” Zoey shuffled. “Is…I was looking for Joan? Joan Bennett?”

“Ah, no.” Answered the unfamiliar woman on the other end. “She no live here no more.”

“What? Where did she go?”

“Mrs. Bennett moved back to America…”

Someone banged on her door - hurried but soft. Zoey’s heart leapt to her throat. 

In two seconds, she was sliding across the floor in her socked feet, yanking it open to reveal...

“Hello.”

“Hi.”

Joan - in rumpled clothes and with unwashed hair and a jet-lagged thousand-yard-stare - tried to smile but it looked pained. “I uh…I’m sorry about…about you and Max.”

Zoey inhaled shakily. “How…how did you…?”

“I follow Tobin’s Twitter account.”

“Of course…”

They were silent for a long moment, the past laying thick between them.

“Singapore isn’t home.” Joan finally declared, not looking at Zoey. “It never felt like home. I…” Her voice faltered, her lips quivering. “I want something with you that’s not just a mistake…not something we pretend doesn’t exist.” She inhaled sharply. “And…I know that you and Max are…were engaged but that doesn’t change the fact that drunkenly marrying you was the best decision I ever made and that’s why I never bothered to nullify it.” She paused for breath, looking like she was shaking slightly. “Well…I just…just had to say that after 5 years of thinking it so…so what do you think?”

“Joan…” Zoey slipped her wedding band over her finger and the universe suddenly seemed just a little more orderly. “This house is too big for one person…” She gestured. “Won’t you move in?”

Her face relaxing, Joan stepped over the threshold and seized her in a vibrant kiss. 

Zoey didn’t need alcohol this time to know that it was the right choice. 

After all, they were already married.


End file.
